There’s been a lot of talk from the right that the United States today is a “center-right” nation; I noted this from Bay Buchanan about a week ago, and we’ve been hearing it a lot since–obviously it’s a widely-distributed talking point the right wing has created in order to give the impression that conservatives are still effectively, if not titularly, in control of things.

Of course, the idea is pretty silly, and falls apart under inspection–and not even close inspection at that. For the past two Congressional elections, Democratic candidates have been winning in large numbers–not just the Senators, where conservative seats have been coming up for challenge in larger numbers, but in the House as well, where everyone must be elected every two years. Obama–the recently elected Democratic president (with a bigger share of the popular vote than any president in the previous four elections), will have a near-super-majority in both houses this time, with more numbers on his side than any Republican president in the past, oh, who knows how long.

But then there is the fact that Americans self-identify as Republicans less and less, and as Independents and Democrats more; it’s hard to imagine a time when the right-wing brand name has been weaker.

Let’s put it this way: if the Republicans had the same thing the Democrats have now: super-majorities in both houses of Congress with the numbers promising to shift even more in their direction two years from now, a popular president in the White House who won by a very comfortable popular margin, and name-brand identification of the Democrats tanking–do you think they would accept claims that the nation was “center-left”? Hell no, they wouldn’t even accept the notion that the nation was center-right. They would claim that the nation had become solidly right-wing and would accept no argument about it, period.

The Dems are hardly that strident, but they do have one thing straight: whatever the nation is right now, it is certainly not on the right of the center line. How much to the left the country has tilted is yet to be seen, but it’s more than just a tiny bit, that’s for sure.

This latest “center-right” myth is simply yet another attempt to work the refs and create a myth that reality is much more right-wing than all the actual evidence says it is. In that sense, this is right in line with myths such as the “liberal media” canard we’ve been bombarded with for so long.

Stumble it!

I know that I have often pointed out that right-wingers blame the other side for everything all the time, but still, they’re going to extremes with this one.

For years after Bush took office, the wingnuts claimed that everything bad about the economy was Clinton’s fault. The idea was that Clinton dug us so deep into a hole that Bush could not possibly be blamed for anything bad that happened economically (though any progress was immediately awarded to Bush).

So, naturally, since Bush, after eight years in office, is handing off a far worse recession, maybe even a depression, to his successor, Obama will get the same grace period, right?

Ha! Of course not. Obama won’t even take office until two months from now, but the wingnuts aren’t wasting any time–despite Obama not even being the president-elect for a whole two weeks yet, the right-wing talking heads are already blaming our current downturn on him, calling it “The Obama Recession.”

What’s the job description for a wingnut? “No critical thinking skills required”? Oh, I’m sure they’ll have some rationalization as to how it just happened to work out the way they’re claiming. I’m just surprised that they are being so transparent about it. I expected them to wait until a few months after Obama took office to start blaming everything on him. But now, anyone who accepts this has to believe that Obama has been working for years behind the scenes to engineer this recession, or that he immediately inherits the recession and the blame for it a few months before he’s able to do anything.

Like the claims made by the wingnuts during the campaign, this new line of crap will be believed only by the converted, by the Kool-Aid drinkers and the Loyal Bushies. The blatant nature of the lie is so transparent, however, that this stands to only help Obama with the moderates.

So, keep spouting, Limbaugh, Hannity, and all the others–keep spouting this laughable lie. The more you do, the more you highlight the fact that it’s a lie, and the more people will remember that it’s a lie for quite some time. You could have waited a decent amount of time, until after Bush had faded away and people had been hurting for a while, and then started blaming Obama–and a lot more people would have bought into it. But now, whenever you try to do that over the next few years, all anyone has to do is to remind everyone that you’ve been saying the same thing since two months before Obama even took office–and at that, the accusation will fall flat.

Stumble it!

Do you remember this guy on the right? Gabriel Schwartz. An attorney, and a “fixture in Colorado Republican politics,” he was an acting GOP delegate for the state of Colorado. He was interviewed for LinkTV, and he said some really hardcore right-wing stuff, delivered with an arrogant, smug, self-important grin. I forget where I saw this interview, but I remember it pretty well–he kind of personified unrestrained, uninhibited right-wing ideology–kind of what you would expect a neocon to say when under sodium pentathol or something. Watch the interview:

Here’s a transcript of the first half:

Hamilton: What is your vision for change under a John McCain administration?
Schwartz: Less taxes and more war.
Hamilton: Less taxes and more war?
Schwartz: More war.
Hamilton: So, where should the United States bomb next?
Schwartz: Iran, baby!
Hamilton: Why? Why should we bomb Iran?
Schwartz: To protect Israel.
Hamilton: So you think Iran is threatening Israel right now and the US should intervene on behalf of them?
Schwartz: Absolutely. Or Israel do it themselves.
Hamilton: So what would that look like, what would a war on Iran look like?
Schwartz: Hopefully, just bomb the hell out of them from the sky, no troops.
Hamilton: Um, are you worried about the escalating costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? I mean, how would we pay for our war on Iran?
Schwartz: We should plant a flag. Take the oil, take the money. We deserve reimbursement.

That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

Well, it turns out not. While this may be old news, it is still quite a thing to behold. Just a few hours after the interview, Schwartz met a good-looking lady in a hotel bar who introduced herself to him. He asked her to go up to his room, and she agreed. She told him to get undressed, and she would mix some drinks. That’s the last thing he remembered, as the knockout drugs took effect. When Schwartz woke up, $120,000 of his money and belongings were gone. Schwartz disputes that report as inaccurate. Not the part about the woman, but about the amount. He says it was only $50,000 worth of stuff that was stolen.

Which makes it all much more understandable. The haul, according to police, included “a $30,000 watch, a $20,000 ring, a necklace valued at $5,000, earrings priced at $4,000 and a Prada belt valued at $1,000, police said. … Aside from the watch, ring, necklace, earrings and belt, Schwartz also reported a $1,000 purse or wallet, a $1,500 cell phone, $500 in cash and a couple of rings worth $50 had been taken.” What the hell, is this guy an attorney or a jewelry salesman? Who the hell brings along $50~120,000 in money and jewelry to a political convention? And how did the police report get this all wrong? They just write down what the victim says; when he said “$10,000 watch,” did the police officer inflate it to $30,000? That’s kind of strange.

In any case, you’ve got to admit that the irony is dazzling. The woman took his advice: she planted her flag and took the money. She deserved reimbursement. Didn’t she?

And really, this serves as a pretty good metaphor for the whole country. Liquored up, we see these Republican candidates who talk pretty to us. We vote for them, inviting them to run the nation for us, and the next thing we know, all of our money is gone and we’re sitting there stripped naked, feeling like idiots.

Schwartz’s sum-up of his experience? “I used poor judgment.” No shit, Sherlock. You’re a McCain delegate. The question is, can the country show slightly better judgment this November? Let’s hope so.

Stumble it!

Sometimes these unpleasant thoughts run through my head late at night. One recent concern relates to today’s anniversary, and what the Bush administration might do if Republicans lose the election. Overtly, they could do anything outrageous up to and including starting a war with Iran; considering what Bush Sr.–a relative saint compared to his son–did, sending our troops into Somalia after the election was lost, one can imagine that almost anything is possible. This administration has nearly decimated the Bill of Rights, introduced massive spying on our own people, introduced torture prisons worldwide, shown incredible disdain for the rule of law, and injected virulently partisan politics into every nook and cranny of government. They are capable of virtually anything.

If Obama wins, what will they do? We know that the whole “W”-keys-gone-missing from White House keyboards was fictional, but even that would have been the worst the Clinton bunch did, had they actually done it. But would the Dubyas do something far worse, like set Obama up for failure by intentionally fumbling the handover?

For example, the Clinton administration did an admirable job briefing the Bushies on national security; they highlighted al Qaeda and bin Laden as one of the biggest threats, if not the biggest threat to the U.S., and presented the Bush people with a fully-formed, highly-functional system for dealing with terror intelligence. The Bushies then completely disregarded that and dropped the ball, leading to 9/11. This is a failure of massive proportions (failure for the country, immense boon to the Bushies) which the Bush administration has felt the sting of over the years.

So if and when Obama wins, will they try to set Obama up for a new attack? Will they try to make themselves look more effective, or set Obama so he’ll lose influence and maybe re-election? Will they withhold vital information? Will they fail to brief his people fully and accurately on how to handle things?

Don’t tell me they wouldn’t possibly dare do that. They would. In a New York minute, if they thought they could get away with it, and they probably believe they could. All they’d have to do is lie about it later, and then attack any attempt to expose them as a partisan political ploy to escape responsibility and smear the opposition.

I just hope that if Obama does win, he keeps this threat in mind and depends on more than just the departing Bushies for support. There will still be untold numbers of Bush’s minions burrowed into the soil of the bureaucracy, ones that Obama won’t be able to dig out even if he attempts to sweep the rosters clear of badly-chosen political appointees.

I hope this is jut a worry, and I try to tell myself I am just being paranoid. But I think back to the fact that Oliver North was the man behind the mission to rescue the hostages in Iran–the ones that met with mechanical problems, crashed, and the mission failed. That mission was the do-or-die moment for the Carter administration, and its failure meant that Reagan became the next president. And one of its planners, Oliver North, turned out to be one of the most rabidly right-wing partisans in recent history.

These are vile, hateful thoughts, that such treason could be possible. But like I said, these are the kind of people we are dealing with.

Stumble it!

Nancy Pelosi got into trouble when she pointed out that abortion has not always been the sin in Christianity that it has been painted to be. She pointed to the works of St. Augustine in the 4th century, who subscribed to “delayed hominization,” and wrote, “the law does not provide that the act [abortion] pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation.” That was Saint Augustine on Exodus 21:22, the source of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”–but also specifies (in a far less quoted preamble) that if one hits a woman so as to cause her unborn child to die, only a monetary fee is required.

Pelosi was quite right–the church has been all over on the matter of abortion, and for most of its history did not frown on abortion itself early in pregnancy. If one is to be perfectly honest, it is a matter which is less ordained by god and more of a detail that church leaders have arbitrarily decided upon–with life beginning at conception being a relatively modern invention (1869, to be exact). What Pelosi was saying is that life-at-conception is not the sure thing that some Christians try to claim it is, and in this, she was right.

The right wing is jumping all over this, with Fox leading the charge saying that “Pelosi blew it” (and that she “committed a major gaff,” which I can only presume is Fox’s bad spelling and not to mean that Pelosi committed a barbed stick) and the Washington Times warning Pelosi that she should not cross the bishops, or else. Much of the media is following their lead.

So, why is Pelosi wrong? Because a bunch of religious authorities decided to interpret biblical works differently than she did, even if Pelosi’s interpretation is closer to how the church has judged abortion for about 90% of its history. But the texts could be read either way, in that biblical texts can say just about anything you want them to say if you stretch and generalize them as much as church scholars and officials have. If you remain more strict to original writings, then interpretation favors Pelosi’s views. Doing it otherwise strays into the territory of letting the church have it both ways–give unequal weight to identical dictums in scripture, or allowing rationalizations about how the “ovum wasn’t discovered until 1827” but we’re supposed to base science on what the bible says.

But hey, with the only thing in the balance being the Catholic Church refusing to give Pelosi Communion and therefore damaging her politically as well as personally, we can at least be grateful that religion is not dictating law. It is only trying really hard, and won’t fully succeed until McCain gets elected. So relax.

Stumble it!

I spoke to this in the comments of a recent post, but I believe that it is an assertion worthy of its own post. That being: Obama is not really getting more coverage than McCain.

Yes, I know, there was a study showing that he does, as there was a similar study showing that Obama’s coverage has been far more negative than McCain’s, despite McCain fumbling and gaffing far more often. But the missing piece comes from the recent Boston Globe story where they showed that the most-often-used word on John McCain’s site was “Obama.” Put all of those pieces together, and the whole picture clicks into place.

The media is likely giving quite equal amounts of coverage to Obama and McCain–but since McCain’s campaign is mostly about Obama, expressing him in the negative, the increased coverage of Obama–more of it negative than with McCain–is simply a result of McCain’s own focus. At least.

I still maintain that McCain is getting a better break because the media pays less attention to him. If the media ignored attacks completely and just focused on each candidate’s actions and policies, and gave each candidate equal time and fair coverage, then John McCain would likely be far lower in the polls than he currently is. When your campaign is a jumbled mess of attacks, policy reversals, senior moments, and gaffes, the media is doing you a huge favor by not paying much attention to you. This effect is amplified because McCain’s pre-standing image is one of a bipartisan maverick, an image that the media still perpetuates despite increasingly large collections of evidence that prove the contrary. Of course, the media goes even further with McCain, actively covering up his gaffes and other negatives in addition to simply ignoring them.

I would also like to touch on how the media covers races. As I mentioned, there would be a great deal better quality to our media coverage–and to the campaign in general–if the media simply outright ignored every negative statement made by one candidate about the other; better still to ignore such statements from pundits. Such partisan attacks are usually highly inaccurate, and the media is supposed to focus on accuracy. Let each candidate define themselves, and then have the media pick up a long-lost responsibility: independent fact-checking. In short, the media should focus on how each candidate proposes to run things, and then do an unbiased, fact-based assessment of these claims. While this may sound like a pipe dream, it is, the last I checked, what journalism is supposed to be about.

That would leave the questions of “equal coverage” and “fair coverage.” Equal coverage suggests that the media should spend exactly the same amount of time covering both candidates. So long as that coverage is truly accurate–and recent coverage has been tilted far more in McCain’s favor, far from accurately–then I am OK with the idea of equal time. If the media wants to have one hour of coverage on Obama giving a stirring speech to 200,000 people in Berlin, and spend another hour with McCain in the cheese section of a local supermarket followed by a press conference in front of the “Fudge Haus,” then fine. But barring that, coverage should be fairly measured in terms of what merits coverage. If McCain is incapable of doing anything worth reporting on, then he should not complain, unless he wants the media to cover him doing nothing interesting, or as is more often the case, doing things badly.

Then there is “fair coverage.” There has been a tendency in the media to try to give both sides equal representation, as if both sides had equal positives and negatives, just as many good ideas and bad ideas, and exactly the same merit and disgrace. This tendency has only really been prevalent since Bush took office and Republicans have been doing 99% of the bad stuff out there–you never saw the media trying to balance coverage of Clinton’s scandals with anything they found on the Republicans. This is mostly a running-scared knee-jerk response to false charges of a “liberal media.” And the idea is indeed flawed–both sides are not always going to be equal. Fair coverage does not mean that you try to give equal positive and negative coverage to each side, it means that you report on exactly what each side has been doing, focusing on them, and not on what they tell you to focus on. If Obama has been speaking to huge, cheering crowds and making clear sound policy decisions, and McCain has been making appearances before small groups and gaffing a lot, the media should not be covering up for McCain and attacking Obama so their coverage seems “fair.”

Similarly, when there is an issue up for discussion and one side is obviously wrong, it should not be given equal respect. Offshore drilling, for example, has been pretty conclusively proven to have almost no value in the context of our current energy issues–it would take many years before any oil production came from it, and that production would have an impact so minimal that daily price fluctuations could completely cancel it out. And yet, in political coverage in the media, the idea is treated with respect as if it weren’t proven to be nothing but an empty pander. Simply because one side says an idea has value doesn’t mean that it does, or that you should accept the claim, or let it pass without pointing out its obvious lack of worth.

Stumble it!

Seymour Hersh in an interview with Think Progress, about how Cheney and his staff were trying to think up ways to start a war with Iran:

There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected — which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it wasn’t accepted — one of the items was why not…

There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives.

And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

So, the New Yorker editors thought that it wasn’t news because during a meeting in which the Vice President was conspiring with administration officials to come up with a way to falsely manufacture a war with a foreign nation, a method that could easily be described as treasonous and at the most charitable, highly illegal, was rejected.

These are the standards we’ve fallen to. We become aware that the Vice President of the United States of America is trying to manufacture a false pretense for going to war, and it’s not considered news. When, of course, the fact that it was rejected is only partly exculpatory; the fact that the intent to commit illegal acts was there should have been a huge news story. But they passed on it as if it wasn’t anything extraordinary.

I have to admit, that was my personal reaction as well–that this just confirms something that I was pretty certain of for some time anyway. That’s the problem with assuming the worst of this gang in the White House: when you find that your assumption of their criminality and foulness is confirmed to be true, you can’t react with surprised outrage. It seems the media feels the same way: “Oh, the Vice President is conspiring to commit illegal acts? Well, we know he’s a scumwad who does stuff like this, so as long as he didn’t actually follow through, I guess we have nothing.”

I am so glad that Bush and Cheney brought honor and dignity back to the White House.

Stumble it!

And, oh yeah, did you hear about the outrageous thing Obama did? He promised to visit wounded veterans, but he insisted that, for security reasons, the wounded vets–many with special medical needs–would have to come to the hall where the speech would be given two hours early, and then be sequestered there until after Obama finished speaking and had left. Since there are no bathrooms in the hall, the wounded and disabled vets would have to hold it in for three or four hours, waiting for Obama’s leisure. The vets group cancelled the event because of this.

Can you imagine the outcry? Can you imagine the howls of outrage by conservatives offended without limit by the temerity and arrogance of that punk Obama? Can you imagine the weeklong media circus? The non-stop pundits decrying Obama for so blatantly abusing out honored veterans?

Except, as you’ve undoubtedly already guessed, it wasn’t Obama. It was Cheney. And the outraged conservatives? Not to be found, of course. And the media coverage? What, are you kidding me?

IOKIYAR.

Stumble it!

Can you tell that Fox News now runs the Wall Street Journal?

The GOP Is the Party of Civil Rights

John McCain is scheduled to address the NAACP’s annual convention in Cincinnati, Ohio today. Although he is unlikely to gain many black votes this year, he should use the occasion to increase Republican efforts to reach out to African-Americans. He can start by setting the record straight on the records of the two parties on race.

Everyone knows this, but it’s worth repeating: The Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln and was established in 1854 to block the expansion of slavery. The Democratic Party was the party of slavery: Its two founders, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, owned large numbers of slaves, and every party platform before the Civil War defended the institution unequivocally.

The article then depends on rather impressively laughable tour of historical cherry-picking to bring it up to date: Republicans McKinley and Harding tried to pass anti-lynching laws which were rebuked by Southern Democrats; Roosevelt & Truman were weak on civil rights, and Johnson only passed strong civil rights laws because Republicans were behind it all–but Nixon was a bigger civil rights champion than Johnson. Ergo, McCain is the new Lincoln and Democrats are all racists.

But really, the foundation, the heart and soul of this claim, and not just in this article, is the whole Lincoln thing–as if today’s Republican Party in any way, shape, or form resembles what Lincoln built more than a century and a half ago. It reminds me of a joke about a man who greatly valued his antique sword; when a friend asked him why it looks so new, the man explained that the hilt wore out and broke apart, so he had it replaced, and that the blade wore down too much, so he had that replaced as well. But it still occupied the same space as the old sword. That’s the Republican Party: it still occupies the same name as the original, but all the parts have been replaced. It is no longer the same institution. Republicans claiming ownership of civil rights because Lincoln ended slavery is like Drew Barrymore claiming she deserves an Oscar for her grandfather’s performances, or like Italy claiming it runs the world because of the might of the Holy Roman Empire.

The racism of southern Democrats the article refers to was inherited by the Republican Party several generations back. Like the Earth’s magnetic pole migrating between north and south over time, progressives and conservatives likewise find new homes in different parties. Ronald Reagan said himself that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, it left him. While Republicans can claim the name of the party Lincoln built, Democrats now preserve its spirit.

Lincoln of course deserves credit for what he did, but the modern Republican Party claiming that it is a champion of civil rights is so patently absurd, so starkly in contrast to their current policies and programs, that it deserves nothing less than to be laughed off the stage in a definitive display of mock and scorn.

Stumble it!

Top headline today:

Bush Says Dems to Blame for High Gas Prices

Do I even need to explain how utterly stupid this claim is? I could spend an hour explaining in gory detail how the basic points in Bush’s argument are so asinine as to be mind-boggling. Instead I shall simply snort in derision and move on.

Stumble it!

Dan Piraro’s blog has become one of my daily visits on the web, and today’s entry identifies a vital issue: the ability of Americans to vote against their own interests, and make insane choices with open eyes:

One thing I’m realistic about is the upcoming election. In a reasonable world, Obama would win in a record-breaking landslide: Bush is the least popular president in nearly 100 years, the economy is in the toilet and a finger is pressing on the flush handle, our reputation worldwide is in the gutter, gas will be $5/gallon by November, according to legal experts, our constitution is in crisis, McCain’s policies are the same as Bush’s or MORE in the direction that nailed us into our current coffin. It’s a no-brainer.

A part of me thinks Obama will win in spite of the combination of stupid, blind patriotism and racism that will account for 90% of the votes against him. But the realist in me is bracing for another close election that the Republicans can steal at the local level. I’m not an alarmist, but that would be national suicide.

If McCain wins, it will change this country for a very long time. Forget what disasters will befall our economy, our troops, our international reputation – the Supreme Court will become a fascist juggernaut for decades to come, and nothing short of an armed uprising will be able to stop them.

In my opinion (and probably Piraro’s as well), that trend began in 2000, and intensified in 2004 when the nation inexplicably said, “give me some more of that!” A lot of this goes deep back in time, and is part of human psyche; but you can’t help feeling that this alternate-reality feel-good-denial self-destructive inclination became a visible tumor writhing under the skin of society, growing to monstrous proportions, probably spurred on by the carcinogen of fear injected on 9/11, and that it is stretching the dermis of our nation so taut that it threatens to burst and… well, I could get into some pretty icky imagery here, but I haven’t even had breakfast yet.

Back to the more analytical side: Look at the economic charts before 2000, and then see where Bush took us after then. Reagan-Bush in the 80’s and early 90’s were a conservative trend that by all rights–and the true and actual votes of the 2000 election–should have continued to swing back after Clinton’s term. I know people love to ridicule Al Gore, and some roll their eyes whenever a compliment is paid to him, but despite all the no-difference talk in 2000, a look back makes it crystal clear that Gore was hands-down the far superior choice. He would have continued the trend Clinton started, handling the economic downturn of 2000 far more reasonably. He either would have prevented 9/11 with the Clinton counter-terrorism policies that the Bush administration abandoned, or he would have acted a thousand times more reasonably, focusing on bin Laden and building a new international alliance. He would have made real progress on environmental issues and perhaps we’d be well on our way to using alternative fuels and escaping our fossil-fuels dependency, and so forth. But most importantly to us back here in grim reality, he would not have gutted the Constitution, he would not have gutted the economy, he would not have made us an international pariah, he would not have started the quagmire in Iraq–in short, he would not have been the single most reprehensible “leader” in our history, and our nation would not be hurtling towards the precipice at quite so alarming a rate of speed. And yet here we are, with millions of Americans again saying, “give me four more years of that!”

I can only wonder at the proclivity of Americans to be so utterly foolish as to even consider any of this, but to me, the choice was just as crystal clear back in 2000. You had a man who was intelligent, who saw the value of the Internet back before anyone else and acted upon it, without whose support the Internet would have died stillborn, who was boldly making his cause an unpopular message of environmental prudence, who looked and talked a bit funny but was still so clearly the better candidate. And he was running against a cocky, juvenile, frat-boy-demeanor failed oilman not too long weaned from drug addiction, the first presidential candidate with a criminal record, for Christ’s sake, a smarmy, stupid, silver-spoon dunce who couldn’t speak straight, who lied so smugly he actually smirked, who attached himself to shadowy people, who used sickeningly slimy tactics against opponents in his own party, and who basely pandered to the fear and greed of people rather than to their better natures. It’s not like we couldn’t see this back in 2000, or in 2004.

McCain is not nearly as bad personally as Bush, giving him some social camouflage, but there is so much there that echoes Bush. McCain was not a draft-dodger or a drug addict, nor does he have a criminal record, nor is he as stupid or altogether pathetic as Bush is or was. But the same lack of character is there, and the same set of policies and abuses is rather brashly being presented to the American people as if they were real, viable, or even constructive courses of action for our nation to take.

There are several reasons to vote for McCain, but as Piraro pointed out, almost all of them are base: fear, greed, hatred, distrust, blind patriotism and blind partisanship.

I truly believe that this is a test for the United States of America. We are being given one last chance to make the right choice. If we fail the test, the United States of America that has existed up until this time will only accelerate in its disintegration, its transformation into something different and far less and without the heart or soul that made the country great. What would remain would be a pale, pretending shadow. If you’re thinking, “oh, they were saying stuff like that back in 2000 and 2004,” then take a look around you–we were right.

There’s no guarantee that Obama can stem the profuse bleeding and bring the nation back to health, nor that the nation won’t turn back toward self-destruction soon after he leaves office. But the choice right now is so clear it is blinding: vote for McCain and you vote for the ruin of America. Vote for Obama, and we have a good chance of making it. If that makes me sound partisan, then too bad; partisanship is not a sin if it is open-eyed and a result of attention to the truth. Nobody criticizes a policeman for being a partisan for public safety; no one questions a doctor for being a partisan of health. The question here is not why I support Obama, the question is, why doesn’t everyone.

Stumble it!

From the Republican debate in New Hampshire, January 6, 2000:

Q: Governor, will you spend what it takes if the US is involved in a war?

Bush: Well, let me put it to you this way: When I’m the president, we’re not going to obfuscate when it comes to foreign policy. If I ever commit troops, I’m going to do so with one thing in mind. And that’s to win. To win in a fashion that not only achieves victory, but gets us out of the theater in quick order.

Hey, zero out of three ain’t bad. In fact, it’s a trifecta!

Other classic Bush campaign promises from two elections ago:

“It must be in our vital interest whether we ever send troops. The mission must be clear. Soldiers must understand why we’re going. The force must be strong enough so that the mission can be accomplished. And the exit strategy needs to be well-defined. I’m concerned that we’re overdeployed around the world.” –Oct 17, 2000

“Morale in today’s military is low. We’re having trouble meeting recruiting goals. Some of our troops are not well-equipped. I believe we’re overextended in too many places.” –October 3, 2000

“But what they ask our nation must provide: a coherent vision of America’s duties, a clear military mission in time of crisis, and, when sent in harm’s way, the best support and equipment our nation can supply.” –May 31, 1999

“Would deter terrorist attacks by ensuring that every group or nation understands that if they sponsor such attacks, the U.S. response will be devastating.” –GeorgeWBush.com, April 2, 2000 (too bad he wasn’t more specific about who would be devastated)

Stumble it!

If you’re in the mood for sleaze, check out a political ad run by a Republican candidate (and incumbent) for Congress. Basically, it attacks the Democratic candidate’s “San Francisco values,” demonstrating that by having three slutty-looking swingers partying it up, bumping and grinding. I’ve lived in San Francisco and grew up in the area, and this doesn’t come any closer to representing the values of the area than a seedy strip club in Missouri represents theirs. But apparently, this passes for kosher in conservative Missouri politics.

I reflected on how people would react if, say, a Massachusetts liberal were to put out an ad representing rural/heartland values by showing gun-toting redneck hicks drinking beer and picking their noses in front of a pickup truck with a Confederate flag on the side. Such a politician would instantly be excoriated, blasted out of the water as an “elitist.”

What it comes down to is the fact that not just ads showing such “San Francisco” values, but pretty much all criticisms of the same sort–attacking either urban/coastal or liberal values as “elitist”–this is in fact the true “elitism.” The same people who claim that liberals are prancing around thinking they are better than everyone else are themselves the ones with the superiority complex; they think that their values are better than those of others. The values I remember from the San Francisco area were pretty much respectful of a wide variety of views and beliefs; it is an accepting, big-tent culture, with “tolerance” being a major theme. I don’t see much tolerance or acceptance among the brand of people who complain about “San Francisco values.”

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A new study:

In the “first nationally representative survey of teachers concerning the teaching of evolution,” the authors show that one in eight high school biology teachers present creationism as a scientifically valid alternative to Darwinian evolution. While this number does not reflect public demand–38% of Americans would prefer that creationism to be taught instead of evolution–it does represent a disconnect between legal rulings, scientific consensus, and classroom education.

Before you think that one in eight is not bad, or even, “what’s wrong with introducing creationism alongside evolution,” consider that this is similar to one in eight Medical School teachers telling their students to consider prayer as a scientifically valid alternative to antibiotics. And then consider whether or not you’d want to be treated at the hospital staffed by graduates of those classes.

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Finally! Rumors of the iPhone coming out in Japan. The carrier: NTT DoCoMo, as I predicted. Apparently, all the attention crashed the Apple Insider web site, which I could not access as of this time. However, the rumors only say that Apple is “close to signing deals” with the Japanese and Korean carriers, and has no specifics about when the iPhone will be available–and Japan is rather infamous for getting stuff late.

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Uh oh. Conservatives are starting to talk about “character” again. I guess, after eight years, they must miss being able to use the word in public when referring to their candidate for president.

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From Virginia:

A federal appeals court panel in Richmond, Va., on Tuesday struck down a Virginia law that made it a crime for doctors to perform what the law called “partial birth infanticide.”

Good. “Partial birth abortion,” a political (not medical) term in this case escalated to “infanticide,” is nothing more than a manufactured straw man intended to stand in for abortion in general. The idea is to vilify the entire practice by choosing the least-commonly practiced (less than one-fifth of one percent of all abortions) but most-easily vilified form of abortion, and making a campaign of it, completely ignoring the medicine or the ethics involved in the process.

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Ewww. An off-duty Japanese railway worker was arrested for forcibly kissing a woman on a train right here in Ikebukuro. Reportedly, he was so drunk that he doesn’t remember what happened, which only makes the image worse. Imagine that guy sticking his tongue down your throat–or your wife’s. From the article:

His employer was apologetic about the incident. “We’re sorry about the case. We’ll improve our guidance of employees,” said a spokesman for Seibu Railway.

Yeah. Be sure to give those employee seminars about not to get completely smashed and sexually assault women. That oughta do it. I mean, such “guidance” is stupid: any employee who doesn’t know better shouldn’t be working there in the first place.

No word in the article about whether or not the guy would be fired.

Stumble it!

The White House has accused NBC of “Deceitful Editing” of an interview with Bush. NBC’s response: No we di-’unt!

I won’t get involved in judging all this, aside to say that if the Bush White House wants to complain about NBC’s “deceitful editing” of the Bush statement on appeasement, the I want to complain about the Bush White House’s deceitful editing of intel leading up to the Iraq War.

You can’t rustle cattle and then cry “thief!”

Stumble it!

From Andrew Sullivan’s “Dissent of the Day,” an excellent example of the “Either/Or” Fallacy:

I believe - and have for some time - that the struggle we face is as much between those of us who believe that there is evil in the world and it cannot - will not - go away with appeasement and those who believe that if we can just find the right words that those who hate us will all of a sudden change their ways OR of we just leave them alone “they” will leave us alone.

See? To this person, you have two choices: expect hostile nations to be implacable enemies, or expect them to be inconsequential. Diplomacy is not about changing a bitter foe into a nice guy, it’s about working things out enough so that things get better instead of worse. It might be a way of making a deal, where both parties compromise so that neither is satisfied, but both are satisfied enough so that war can be averted. Sometimes it’s about showing people on both sides the views, needs, fears, and necessities of the other, and finding a way to make them mesh in a peaceful manner. Or sometimes, diplomacy is, as Wynn Catlin said, “the art of saying ‘nice doggie!’ until you can find a rock.”

The writer’s words line up nicely with the Bush philosophy–“If you’re not with us, then you’re against us.” The enemy will never behave, so don’t even try–they must be defeated, anything else is coddling. No middle ground. No compromise. In other words, no diplomacy. That’s why they reach for Hitler, and not Gorbachev, as their example–Hitler fits their bill perfectly. And that explains so many of this administration’s abject failures. Not just abroad, but at home as well–there is no room for compromise with Republicans, or at least so little that it makes almost no difference.

It also, however, describes the foreign policy mindset of the right wing. It’s why they hate the United Nations, and instead want something like McCain’s “League of Democracies,” which is shorthand for “a bunch of countries that will do whatever we want them to do and give use more credibility.” In other words, another “Coalition of the Willing.” The United Nations is hated by conservatives because it does not always do the bidding of the United States. It’s why right-wingers demand that any multi-national force where American soldiers are serving must be led by American officers–the idea of American soldiers under foreign command is appalling to them, but they think it natural that soldiers of other countries would serve happily under our command.

It is the quintessential Ugly American, the xenophobe venturing abroad. We are the sole arbiters of what is right and what is wrong. Do what we say or else. We will not respect you, but you had better respect us; we are the natural leaders of the world. It is nationalism, it is arrogance, it is ego and a lack of compassion.

Time for a change.

Stumble it!

Wow, the right-wingers are really showing their true colors as bigots. They just filibustered (what, the 5,349,816th time this session?) a bill that would make it possible for workers to sue for pay discrimination, essentially killing it. Obama and Clinton returned to D.C. to vote for it, and McCain stayed away, signaling that he would have voted to kill it anyway.

Let’s rehash: this is based upon a scummy re-interpretation of law by the Bush administration. The original law was intended to make it so that if you found out your employer was paying you less than another worker for the same job because you were the wrong gender or race, you could sue them, so long as you filed suit 180 days after the last occurrence of the discriminatory pay. That was obviously meant to be structured so that the 180 day deadline happened after the last disparate paycheck was issued.

In a suit based upon this law, an employer tried to claim that the 180-day deadline started when the initial decision was made to issue unequal pay, taking advantage of wording that was just nebulous enough to allow for that interpretation (if you’re a complete idiot). Co-workers don’t immediately disseminate how much money they make to all coworkers, and employers often strongly discourage (or even try to prohibit) such sharing in any case. Finding such disparity within 6 months of the initial pay difference is so rare to discover that the law would essentially be meaningless under the new interpretation. It’s about as obvious as it can get that this was not the way the law was supposed to work.

The plaintiff, Ms. Lilly Ledbetter, won her case, and all the appeals until it reached the conservative-stacked 11th circuit (a spin-off of the 5th circuit, the most conservative in the country)–whereupon the law suddenly changed to support discrimination. Then the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, and naturally, the Bush administration jumped on the company’s side, filing a brief in support of the bigotry, in opposition to the EEOC’s rational application of the law in accordance with decades of precedence. And the 5-member Republican majority on the Supreme Court voted along straight party lines to uphold the ludicrous reinterpretation that essentially gutted the law. (Message: if you’re a corrupt, lawbreaking corporation, now is the time to get your suits before the high court! Get the payoffs while they last!)

Some right-wingers used the “it’s the law’s fault” defense, saying that they’d like to fight against discrimination, but darn it, the law is just so clearly written to be stupid, we have no choice but to follow it and be stupid ourselves. The Bush administration made no such dodges; they simply claimed [PDF] that once a decision was made to discriminate, a corporation could not be expected to remember that it had initiated such discrimination beyond 6 months, and it would be a travesty if people were allowed to sue after discrimination had continued for years and years. (They even made the deranged argument that the Ledbetter law would discourage allegations of discrimination from being “expeditiously resolved.”)

So if a corporation got away with discrimination for 180 days, then they were home free–untouchable from that point on. As I pointed out before, this asinine view of the law just begs for abuse, and is even institutionalized in posterity if pay increases are decided as a percentage of initial pay levels.

Well, no problem–just re-word the law so that it clearly states the obvious intent. But there’s a big problem–no, two big problems: one, the president–who vowed to veto the reworded bill, and now the Senate Republicans, who just filibustered it to death before it could even get to the president’s desk.

So the conservative wingnuts in all three branches of government have not voiced their intent to let bigotry reign.

Ready to vote yet?

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: the insidious Liberal Media™ continues to call Republican obstruction “blocking” or “denying” in their headlines, even eschewing the correct term “filibuster” in the full text of most of the articles covering this story (the few that there are, that is). They showed no such reluctance to use the word “filibuster” almost endlessly in the far more rare cases when Democrats blocked a handful of the most extremist right-wing judicial nominees.

Oh, and here’s a bonus bit of Republican hypocrisy:

Republicans said Democrats were playing politics, by timing the vote to give the Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, time to return to the Capitol from the campaign trail. Both senators spoke in support of the bill before the vote.

Yes, how terrible that they allowed senators time to vote on legislation. As opposed to four years ago, when Kerry returned to D.C. to vote for a veteran’s health care vote… and the Republican leadership delayed the vote so Kerry couldn’t vote on it. Those Republicans are just pips, aren’t they?

Stumble it!

Reading Snopes every day, one gets the very strong sense that right-wingers do a hell of a lot of propagandizing via email, and this under-the-media-radar stuff verges on the explosive–and often goes way over the edge. I mentioned this within a previous omnibus post.

In fact, I posted on this kind of thing two and a half years ago, but focused more on the propensity of right-wingers to vilify Katrina victims. Back then, there was a wave of rumors spread by email claiming that blacks from New Orleans were living high off the FEMA hog, blowing their aid money on luxuries or gambling it away, refusing to accept jobs, and instead spreading crime and disease to good-samaratin victims trying to help them.

A lot of fake emails making the rounds are hoaxes or scams–pleas for emails for sick children which are probably spam address harvesting ploys, or frightening stories about abuse to animals which have no basis in reality. However, those which seem politically slanted far more often slant to the right wing ideals, with racial overtones often in overt display.

Many seem to be political attempts to dampen criticism of Republicans by heaping blame and scorn on Democrats or even those who are victims of Republican mismanagement. The many attacks on destitute blacks out of New Orleans after Katrina was almost certainly intended to blunt criticism against the Bush administration by making the victims seem despicable and deserving of what they got, or otherwise portrayed them as stupid and lazy, making their misfortune their own fault.

But a lot of it is politically motivated, like the flood of fake propaganda emails assailing Barack Obama, no doubt responsible for so many thinking he’s a Muslim. Or the one I pointed out that paints a starkly racist picture of his family, equally fake. Similarly, criminal acts by Bush and fellow Republicans are responded to by making Democrats seem worse, like this email claiming Clinton was a felon who somehow got “pardoned” (by whom?), or that he was the real Enron beneficiary.

However, it was a Snopes story from a few days ago which prompted this post, as it had yet another viral email from the right wing which perfectly exemplified this kind of thing. It was an email which has appeared in blogs, forums, newspaper letters-to-the-editor–you name it, it’s been there. The basic claim is that more soldiers died while Clinton was president than did under Bush–the obvious implication being that Bush is not costing soldier’s lives with his botched con-job in Iraq. Here’s how it’s laid out:

These are some rather eye-opening facts.

Since the start of the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sacrifice has been enormous. In the time period from the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 through today, we have lost over 3,000 military personnel to enemy action and accidents.

As tragic as the loss of any member of the US Armed Forces is, consider the following statistics: The annual fatalities of military members while actively serving in the armed forces from 1980 through 2006:

1980 ……..2,392
1981 ……..2,380
1984 ……..1,999
1988 ……..1,819
1989 ……..1,636
1990 ……. 1,508
1991 ……..1,787
1992 ……..1,293
1993 ……..1,213
1994 ……..1,075
1995 ……..2,465
1996 ……..2,318    Clinton years @14,000 deaths
1997 ……….817
1998 ……..2,252
1999 ……..1,984
2000 ……..1,983
2001 ……… 890
2002 ……..1,007
2003 ……..1,410
2004 ……..1,887
2005 ……….919
2006………. 920     Bush years (2001-2006): 7,033 deaths

If you are confused when you look at these figures, so was I.

Do these figures mean that the loss from the two latest conflicts in the middle East are LESS than the loss of military personnel during Mr. Clinton’s presidency; when America wasn’t even involved in a war? And, I was even more confused; when I read that in 1980, during the reign of President (Nobel Peace Prize winner) Jimmy Carter, there were 2,392 US military fatalities!

These figures indicate that many members of our Media and our Politicians will pick and choose. They present only those “facts” which support their agenda-driven reporting. Why do so many of them march in lock-step to twist the truth? Where do so many of them get their marching-orders for their agenda?

(These statistics are published by Congressional Research Service, and they may be confirmed by anyone at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf )

The funny thing about this is that whoever it was who wrote this included the URL for the actual data on military casualties–a report which shows the numbers claimed are not just wrong, but clearly faked.

As you might expect, military deaths under Clinton were not higher than they are under Bush. In fact, they were the lowest under Clinton than they were under any other president since 1980. Furthermore, the data cited is flawed in another fundamental way. Before getting into that, however, one wonders at the idea that hundreds of right-wing bloggers and forum-goers would repeatedly post the fake data, right along with the URL to the proof the data was fake, and never bother to check it out. Is there that little capacity to self check, that great a desire to believe what they want to believe that so many would do something so lame-brained?

A quick look at the relevant table on page 11 of the linked PDF file shows that the figures in the right-wing rant have been clearly altered to make Clinton’s numbers higher and Dubya’s lower.The number of deaths on both lists remains mostly consistent up until 1994… after which Clinton’s numbers are fictionalized as being higher, and Bush 43’s numbers are artificially lowered.

The real numbers show the following: in total deaths, average per year:

Reagan: 2150
Bush 41: 1556
Clinton: 938
Bush 43: 1465

In accidental deaths, average per year:

Reagan: 1332
Bush 41: 872
Clinton: 494
Bush 43: 521

And in hostile deaths, in combat, average per year:

Reagan: 7
Bush 41: 43
Clinton: 0*
Bush 43: 433

*Clinton’s zero figure comes from the fact that while he was president, only one soldier died from hostile fire–despite harsh Republican criticism that Clinton was putting U.S. soldiers in harm’s way in the Balkans.

In fact, counting by almost any category–homicide, suicide, illness, accident, or hostile fire–fewer soldiers died under Clinton than did under either Bush or Reagan. The only exception is in the category of terrorist attacks, in which fewer died under Bush Sr. But that’s it.

Even if the creator of this forged polemic had been honest in reporting the numbers, the basic premise is still flawed–as it counts not just casualties from fighting, but all casualties. The idea being that a president is going to be held responsible for all servicemen who died in accidents of any kind, for example.

But the obvious gist of the article is that Bush is not being irresponsible with the troops, with the natural assumption being that the Iraq War is not as hard on soldiers as was duty under Clinton–and this is patently false, under any pretense, but especially under the only reasonable comparison, which is counting deaths under hostile circumstances.

Now, when you think about it, you don’t even need to look at the tables to see that the numbers have been faked; just look at the purported number of total deaths for 2005 and 2006 that the right-wingers are claiming: 919 and 920? In years where 846 and 822 U.S. soldiers died in the Iraq War, respectively? Supposedly we are to believe that the number of soldiers who died in accidents or other causes fell to nearly zero under Dubya after being in the thousands in other years?

The whole thing is an example of the blatant lies that ardent right-wingers so fiercely embrace, even when the evidence they are flat-out wrong is staring them in the face, so long as the fake “truths” tell them what they want to hear.

Stumble it!

The talking heads on the air waves are agonizing over whether we should make a big deal over the 4000th US soldier dead in Iraq.

My opinion: we should be agonizing over every single soldier who dies in Iraq, and for that matter, every Iraqi civilian who dies as well.

But if we can only get media attention, as compromising as it is, when the US death toll hits yet another thousand mark, then so be it.

Stumble it!

From The NYT:

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain said Thursday that he had no concerns about his meeting the constitutional qualifications for the presidency because of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone. A Democratic colleague said she wanted to remove even a trace of doubt.

The Democrat, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, introduced legislation that would declare that any child born abroad to citizens serving in the United States military would meet the constitutional requirement that anyone serving as president be a “natural born” citizen.

“In America, so many parents say to their young children, ‘If you work hard and you play by the rules, in America someday you can be president of the United States,’ ” said Ms. McCaskill, a supporter of the presidential bid of Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois. “Our brave and respected military should never have to spend a minute worrying whether or not that saying is true for their child.”

And rightly so.

But it brings up an interesting point, in that this is a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. Had it been Obama born outside the U.S., he would likely have had no Republican trying to come to his defense–much less a Republican supporter of his presidential rival. Instead, Republicans would have exploited this to attack him endlessly, using it to suggest that he’s not a “real” American. Being a child in a military family stationed overseas would not have made a difference; partisan Republicans have shown no reluctance to defecate on members of the military in political power plays, as we saw with their debasing of McCain in 2000, Max Cleland in 2002, and John Kerry in 2004.

Stumble it!

My brother gave me a book some time ago, one called No Lesser Plea, recommending it as one to read. It is, from what I can tell, a story about a ruthless killer who slips through the cracks of the justice system, and must be dealt with accordingly. The problem is, I couldn’t finish it. It was just too ridiculously a right-wing fantasy. It was bad enough that the author had a cold-blooded murderer which the police had dead to rights get off scot-free by erupting in court and yelling “You hurt my momma!” (Um, yeah, right. Like that’s all it takes.) But I really had to put the book down after reading this description of the court-appointed psychiatrist:

Dr. Stone was not prejudiced. He considered himself a liberal, in that he believed that when black people were violent and committed crimes it was not really their fault.

All of this struck me as so ludicrous as to be beyond belief, except maybe by Ann-Coulter-level wingnuts who spout that kind of crap. But when I looked up the book in reviews on the web, nobody seemed to realize this. One review called the legal action “realistic,” and others praised the book in similar fashion. I mean, really? If I read a story where the author wrote, “He considered himself a conservative, in that he believed all black people were violent and committed crimes,” I would have a similar reaction; when the bias is so stark and unbelievable, the story loses its realism and becomes unpalatable.

I have to wonder, though, how many people believe this stuff. There seems to be a wide acceptance of the kinds of ideas this author, Tanenbaum, is shoveling forth. Maybe this is just colored by my own bias, but it seems that radical liberals are much more talked about as being out there, but radical conservative myths seem to be far more widely accepted and believed. Criminals being let off by liberal bleeding hearts, welfare queens bleeding the system dry, illegal immigrants stealing jobs and leeching off social welfare, Democrats guilty of taxing and spending us out of house and home… these untenable stereotypes nonetheless seem to get the greatest attention and the most widespread belief.

Is it just my imagination? Or is there far more outrageous right-wing myth circulating out there than there is liberal myth? If the reverse is true, then what are the liberal myths that have such strong a hold on the imagination and the fears of the American people?

Stumble it!